I'm creating an interactive PDF in InDesign. I'm using checkmarks in the design and i would like to customize the appearance because the standard checkmark is, well, very wingdingslike...

I've managed to customize the appearance, but when I export the PDF things go south. The design looks good when I open the exported PDF, when a checkmark is ticked it's still OK, but when I click anywhere else on the page the checkmark changes to the standard checkmark.

I work in CC2015, using Acrobat Pro DC on a Mac.

Here's a screendump of the checkmark in three different visual stages.

In Indesign, for a checkbox, you can define the On, Off and Rollover visual state of a checkbox. In Acrobat, there is a property for the checkbox called "Check Box Style". This property controls the way a checkbox looks once the box is checked and user moves on to do other things within the PDF. The "On" state that you set in Indesign, only controls how the box looks during the action of clicking it. Your Clicked (no focus) shows the "Check Box Style" state. You can change this appearance to: Check, Circle, Square, Cross, Diamond and Star, but unfortunately can not modify the visual look of the check mark.

So essentially it is pointless to build a interactive form in indesign anymore. This is ridiculous, now if the original document needs to be changed we have to change it and manually add all the fields in if we want any customization such as color.

All due respect but it does seem ridiculous that form creation with InDesign CC is a two-step and two program process (InDesign to Acrobat). The form creation in InDesign should either export to PDF exactly as designed or, really, what is the point? Obviously, once again (or should I say as usual) Adobe has released InDesign CC before the details have been worked out. Leaving all of us to add more steps to our workflow. Call it what it is, don't "sugar-coat" it or make excuses. I just hope that it is worked out in the next iteration of InDesign.

There are a ton of features that could be added to InDesign. I'd love much of what you'd like to add but there are literally thousands of feature requests. You can post yours to the place where the product managers will see it, here:

Thanks Steve, for the additional info. But you'd have to agree with BlindCatMedia, InDesign gives you the possibility to add certain custom shaped interactions to your form, but when exported to PDF this all is discarded. This wouldn't be so bad if Acrobat gives you the same possibilities, but it doesn't. This means that I promised my client a certain look-and-feel, but the end-result will differ. On top of that, because of the fact that I can't manage the whole workflow in one single program (InDesign) I have to prepare my client for 8 hours of extra work if there is a correction to the content after I added all the interactions in Acrobat. (Fortunately, they agreed on this, but it's not a very friendly customer approach). What's your opinion on this?